The Free University of New York City is an experiment in radical education and an attempt to create education as it ought to be. First conceived as a form of educational strike in the run up to May Day, 2012, the Free University has subsequently organized numerous days of free and open education in parks and public spaces in New York City. Our project is born out of a recognition that the current system of higher education is as unequal as it is unsustainable. With increasing tuition at public and private institutions, the increasing use of precarious adjunct labor, and the larger and larger amounts of debt that students are expected to take on, a university education is systematically becoming a rarefied commodity only available to the few. It is in this context that the Free University operates as a radical and critical pedagogical space. We collaborate on the following goals and principles:

to be a cooperative enterprise working for a new form of education that re-defines what it means to be educators and students.

to prefigure a more democratic, horizontal, and radical educational structure.

to empower ourselves, each other, and our communities to become decision-makers in our own processes of self-education.

to expose the inequities of the existing university system.

to intentionally and conscientiously create educational spaces that are anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and anti-authoritarian.

to fight against the casualization and precaritization of academic labor.

to join others who see education as a form of direct action by withdrawing from the failing capitalist education system, and collaborating in the realization of a more accessible education for all.

In realizing these shared principles, we will reinvigorate the Commons by utilizing public spaces throughout the city. Free education is a right!!!

My Gender and Womens Studies professor let us in on a little secret today.

Education and the jobs within education are going to be gone soon. GONE. It’s an unfair system that messes up your life. She linked us to an artice that I can’t actually access on this computer- the school’s wifi blocks it. because it’s the truth. It’s called something like “PhD, now with foodstamps”. It’s extremely difficult to be a professor nowadays. They take the weaker, younger, more inexperienced ones first, and pay them less, and put so much work on them that they want to leave, then give the job to someone already in the system with tenure or something, i don’t know, it’s ridiculous.

Now, I’ve wanted to go into education for a while, now. But…I’m having second thoughts. My teacher actually came up to me and told me to go into art, illustration, graphic design, and animation.

She said that at this point in time, and where things are headed, I have a much better chance at getting hired at an animation studio than becoming a teacher with pay that’s more than minimum wage.

[image description: “A world-class education at your fingertips.” in black on a white background. Beneath that, from left to right: a blue & green logo, “Academic Earth” in caps and in black, and “Open Culture” in a bluish-white font on a light blue background. End description.]

On Thursday, I’m giving a talk on Digital Humanities and Digital History to a group of new Public History graduate students. I’m assuming that they know little to nothing of digital humanities. So, I thought that I would summarize what digital humanities looks like as a practice when graphed against developments in web technologies (with which I assume they are more familiar). The graph is not meant to be definitive, nor is it meant to summarize my own views about the trajectory (good, bad, or otherwise) of DH. Rather, it’s meant to summarize some predominant ideas in the field as well as to provide some avenues for reflection on the relationship technology and scholarship. I would be very interested in any suggestions. Thanks. Jason.

On Thursday, I’m giving a talk on Digital Humanities and Digital History to a group of new Public History graduate students. I’m assuming that they know little to nothing of digital humanities. So, I thought that I would summarize what digital humanities looks like as a practice when graphed against developments in web technologies (with which I assume they are more familiar). The graph is not meant to be definitive, nor is it meant to summarize my own views about the trajectory (good, bad, or otherwise) of DH. Rather, it’s meant to summarize some predominant ideas in the field as well as to provide some avenues for reflection on the relationship technology and scholarship. I would be very interested in any suggestions. Thanks. Jason.

I’m pleased to be organizing an AERA research conference, “Access, Competition, and For-Profit Colleges” in collaboration with Sandy Darity, The Research Network on Racial & Ethnic Inequality, and with generous support from the AERA Conference Grant.

This interdisciplinary two-day conference will convene September 21-22, 2012 at Duke University. You can register and learn more here.

This conference dovetails with my research on legitimacy, race, gender, and outcomes of for-profit higher education so I’m very excited.

The conference objectives attend to three major goals: a survey of existing for-profit literature, an analysis of major gaps in existing literature with an attention to methodological concerns in the study of for-profits; and, an agenda for proposed research on for-profits.

Scheduled panels include:

Mapping the For-profit Research Landscape

For-Profit Higher Education and The Social Good

Race, Class, and Gender: Who are For-profit students?

The Problem of Data: How to Study For-profits

Public Finance, Competition, and For-profits: Do The Means Justify The Ends?

Online Pedagogy, Social Media, and Representation in For-Profits

I’m particularly excited about the Emerging Scholarship panel. It includes papers on:

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Emory University “Legitimacy and Mobility: When Becoming ‘Real College’ Is An Institutional Barrier”

Christine Tracy and Molly Kleinman, University of Michigan “The Acquisition of Non-profit Colleges and Universities by For-profit Corporations in the United States”

Thomas Mays, University of Dayton “Social Capital and For-profit Colleges”

Rohit Dutta Roy, Jadavpur University “Privatization of Education in India and the Conflicts with Equity Objective: Should Higher Education be Seen as a Business for ‘Profit-Making”

I could not be more pleased with the engagement of scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum: Sara Goldrick-Rab, Jorge Klor De Alva, Mark Schneider, MaryBeth Gasman, Laura Perna, Kevin Kinser, Letitia Oseguera, Gaye Tuchman to name a few. Goldie Blumenstyk and Victor Borden from CHE and IHE, respectively, will also be in the house.

We’re aiming to do nothing short of move the conversation about for-profit education forward to produce rigorous interdisciplinary research, theoretically grounded and publicly engaged on a topic that too often dissolves into polemics.